Interesting, @Michel. I have never had a problem with them. As long as you are not on a “government provided insurance” (Medicare, Medicaid, Military, etc.), you have “commercial insurance,” the coupon isn’t expired, and you enabled the card, you qualify. I’m wondering if your pharmacist or pharmacy technician just didn’t know how to input them.
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It is very possible. We have regular health insurance, so we definitely wouldn’t be in the “government-provided insurance” case.
We have focused on learning about the disease this past 2 years, so billing issues have taken a back seat to that and I never focused on investigating it.
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I only used these to avoid my insurance deductibles at the first of the year and to get medications my prior insurance wouldn’t cover (like Afrezza).
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@Michel, I too had troubles using mfr co-pay cards (Novo Nordisk) at my pharmacy, so I called the co-pay card phone number. They provided me with an online form that allowed me to get the same deal, I just had to wait for the rebate (usually about 15 days).
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There’s a lot on here I don’t have experience with, but I will say the Walgreens Savings Club saved me a lot of money when I was in grad school and had insurance, but there was a $1000 or $2000 cap on prescription pay outs several years. For the years it was $1000, that was less than than two full refills of all my scripts (insulin, strips, and a couple of higher cost non-diabetes pills). So FYI, you can definitely have health insurance and still have to pretty much buy all your meds out of pocket, so these resources are very helpful! I’m thankful to have comprehensive health insurance now.
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That must have been tough. I think if I was in that situation I’d just use the rx coverage for critical meds and find discount strips to buy outside of coverage. Would hate to have bloated prices for insurance market strips eating into what they were willing to cover for insulin
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@Sam, I have done just that. Buy strips on the internet because it was less than half of my Rx copay, bargaining with my local independent pharmacist on generics and only paying for insulin with insurance when necessary. Otherwise it was Walmart insulin for me.
BTW, did you start your experiment? I would be very interested in your findings.
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I mean, it was almost a moot point, because it covered so little anyway, since insulin was about $200 ea, so that’s $400, I had two meds that were about $150 each, so another 300, so that’s $700 right there, not counting strips and other cheaper meds, leaving not even enough in my cap to even fully cover the second month’s insulin. So basically, I got one month’s meds covered per year, plus a little extra.
And again, that was with health insurance. And pre-ACA. Private health insurance is a joke, in that even if you have it, you still can end up really screwed by your only option for it. If you’re wondering, these were Aetna and Humana plans.
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I have purchased my own strips from amazon or eBay for proabably 95% of my ‘career’ I get to shop around for the ones I want and the setup that fits my lifestyle and budget instead of having a solo choice that doesn’t work well for me dictated to me by the pbm… it’s good for me psychologically to maintain a little bit of control in this situation
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I know it is the same in Canada, but, when they sell online (mostly to the US), it appears that Canadian pharmacies adjust pricing to the US market, where FIASP is higher.
Building scenarios
Once we had researched best pricing* in the US and in Canada, we built up a set of scenarios showing the cost of insulin when purchased in the US or in an online Canadian pharmacy.
In the scenarios:
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we assumed 40% basal/ 60% bolus insulin for a given TDD
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we assumed TDDs for a “typical” toddler, child and teen
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we came up with different TDD scenarios for adults
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we assumed that all PWDs and CWDs were on MDI
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we used aggressive numbers for loss and spillage (meaning low): we assumed that, if insulin was at a premium, priming would be down carefully to the minimum amount needed.
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for the Canadian purchase use cases, we used $25 for shipping costs per 3 months, regardless of volume. We assumed that the PWDs would always purchase 3 months of supplies in one shipment (there is some customs risk in importing more than 3 months at a time).
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In both US and Canada purchases, we selected the types of insulin that would cost the least amount per insuln unit. In the US, it meant Basaglar pens and Humalog vials. In Canada, in meant Basaglar cartridges or pens, and Apidra, Humalog or Novolog vials.
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for comparative reasons, we calculated consumption for 3 months, and divided the result by 3 to show the cost per month.
(to be continued)
Use scenarios: purchasing insulin in the US
Using the hypotheses from the previous post, the tabulated scenarios follow:
It is difficult to draw conclusions, because (a) conclusions are so dependent upon a person’s income and use, and (b) these numbers do not include all supplies (the full tabulation will be presented in an upcoming post). I think these numbers are difficult if not impossible to bear for someone without health insurance.
The next step, for us, was to see what the equivalent calculation would produce when purchasing analog insulin from an online Canadian pharmacy.
(to be continued)
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Which insulins are you using for basal and bolus? Maybe I missed that somewhere in your description.
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Use scenario: purchasing analog insulin in Canada
Using the same hypotheses as in the previous post, we ran the same scenarios, applied to purchasing insulin in a Canadian pharmacy. The tabulated scenarios follow:
The conclusions I draw here are easy to come:
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purchasing insulin in 3-months batches from Canada is less than half what it costs to buy it in the US
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it appears to me that, looking at insulin only (including shipping costs), Canada-sourced insulin can still be seen by many as a (more) affordable way to treat diabetes in the US.
(to be continued in a few days)
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Kate, a couple of posts ago I listed the insulin selections: essentially we picked the cheapest insulins for each case, but it is not very noticeable, sorry! It was always Basaglar for basal. In the US it was Humalog vials for bolus insulin. In Canada any of Humalog, Novolog or Apidra would work if it was in vials.
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Thanks for putting this together! I really appreciate it! Makes the prospect of losing insurance much less daunting.
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Also, the cost for insulin from Canada, isn’t different at all from our out of pocket cost for pump supplies and insulin with insurance in the US.
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And that’s after you paid somewhere between many hundreds and several thousands for the underlying insurance policy each month…
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Meri Schuhmacher’s blog post today http://www.ourdiabeticlife.com/2018/04/insulin-is-6.html objects to the price (not cost) of insulin. The illustration is a top-ten list of the world’s most expensive liquids. It must be taken as righteous hyperbole rather than assertion of fact, but goes like this:
- Scorpion venom $10,302,700 / L
- King cobra venom $40,400 / L
- LSD $32,500 / L
- Horseshoe crab blood $15,850 / L
- Chanel No. 5 $6,900 / L
- Insulin $3,900 - $26,400 / L
- Mercury $900 / L
- Black printer ink $720 / L
- GHB $660 / L
- Human blood $400 / L
Evidently the source is a talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgjl6SqGDaE
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This thread is amazing. Good work and thank you!
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